Chamberlain Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's House, Statue and Grave at Brunswick, Maine

Thanks @Buckeye Bill for bringing us to Chamberlain's hometown. His own home is beautiful and I, like @Karen Lips , wondered about the simplicity of his gravesite. It doesn't seem to do him justice, but if the whole town is a memorial to him then I guess that answers that question.
 
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Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was born on this day in 1828. He was an American college professor from the State of Maine, who volunteered during the American Civil War to join the Federal Army. Although having no earlier education in military strategies, he became a highly respected and decorated Federal officer, reaching the rank of brigadier general (and brevet major general). For his gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was given the honor of commanding the Federal troops at the surrender ceremony for the infantry of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. After the war, he entered politics as a Republican and served four one-year terms of office as the 32nd Governor of Maine. He served on the faculty, and as president, of his alma mater, Bowdoin College.
 
The first statue has a very unusual feature. Chamberlain's right hand is outstretched, palm down, as if resting on something, and yet there is nothing under it. Does anyone know if there was once another piece of this statue? Something that might have been broken or stolen?
 
Chamberlain's right hand is outstretched, palm down, as if resting on something, and yet there is nothing under it. Does anyone know if there was once another piece of this statue? Something that might have been broken or stolen?

He was holding a Confederate soldier's skull when this statue was first dedicated. In 2004, the skull was stolen by unknown Confederate sympathizers.

Bill
 
He was holding a Confederate soldier's skull when this statue was first dedicated. In 2004, the skull was stolen by unknown Confederate sympathizers.

Bill
That seems rather morbid :skull: and unlike any other monument I've ever come across!

I could maybe imagine a skull in some General's hands, but not Chamberlain's.
 
The Chamberlain House is a very nice museum. I remember visiting back in 1995 and the tour guide told us how before the movie Gettysburg came out, they would have tops of maybe 1000 visitors. The year after the film they had something like 10000 visitors.
 
Brunswick is a truly lovely town. My father lived his last years here and often said that, outside of marrying my mother, moving to Brunswick was the best decision he ever made. The photographs are terrific--and he'd have enjoyed seeing them!

Joshua Chamberlain is one of my favorites--I don't understand his detractors (except to guess that their research is scanty). About the war, he wrote:
Slavery and freedom cannot live together. Had slavery been kept out of the fight, the Union would have gone down. But the enemies of the country were so misguided as to rest their cause on it, and that was the destruction of it and of them. We did not go into that fight to strike at slavery directly; we were not thinking to solve that problem, but God in his providence, in his justice, in his mercy, in his great covenant with our fathers, set slavery in the forefront, and it was swept aside as in a whirlwind, when the mighty pageant of the people passed on to its triumph.”

As I did the follow-up on the local soldiers that I researched--on the veteran days of those who survived--I often came upon his name. He came to my town to dedicate the Civil War cannon in the park and he often worked as governor to better the condition of Maine veterans, Indeed, he seems to be among the earliest to recognize what we call "PTSD". The national organization, dedicated to assistance to wounded veterans, is called "The Joshua Chamberlain Society"; it is headquartered in Texas, not Maine.
 
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